The present disclosure relates to a vehicle seat and, more specifically, to a vehicle seat capable of housing a seat back and a seat cushion in a position lower than a vehicle body floor.
Conventionally, vehicle seats capable of housing a seat back and a seat cushion which constitute a seat main body in a housing floor formed at a position lower than a vehicle body floor are already known, and among them, vehicle rear seats capable of housing a seat main body to be folded forward in a housing floor provided in front of the seat exist, for example, see Japanese Patent Publication JP 2009-067309 (“the '309 Publication”).
The vehicle seat described in the '309 Publication includes a housing structure consisting of a mounting shaft mounted to a vehicle body floor and supporting a seat back pivotally, and a leg member whose upper end supports the front portion of a seat cushion and whose lower end is pivotally held in a holding groove fixed to a housing floor. At the time of a housing operation of a seat main body, the seat back rotates to move the seat cushion to the housing floor with respect to the vehicle body floor, and the leg member rotates around the holding groove in conjunction with the seat back, thereby capable of housing the seat main body in the housing floor. Moreover, the vehicle seat is configured to be capable of switching from a usage state that an occupant can sit to a tip-up state that the seat cushion is flipped up after detaching the leg member from the holding groove.
In the seat capable of housing the seat main body in the housing floor, like the '309 Publication, the leg member supporting the seat cushion was a long member because of being connected between the seat cushion and the housing floor. Then, when attaching and detaching the leg member to and from the holding groove in a switching operation of a usage state and a tip-up state, the deflection width in the front to back direction of the detached leg member is increased due to a long total length of the leg member, so an operation of attaching the leg member to the holding groove was made difficult. In particular, when the seat main body is somewhat roughly handled during a switching operation thereof, the moving action of the leg member was affected by such as the contact of the moving leg member with a portion of the seat, thereby making the operation of reattaching the leg member to the holding groove more difficult. Thus, a vehicle seat in which a switching operation from a usage state is easy has been demanded.
Moreover, in the seat like the '309 Publication, component parts such as the leg member and the holding groove for supporting the seat back rotatably are mounted not only on the vehicle body floor surface on which the seat main body is installed but also on the housing floor surface, which complicated the housing structure for housing the seat main body. Therefore, a vehicle seat capable of being housed in a housing floor with a simple structure has been demanded. Moreover, a vehicle seat capable of securing a wide housing space has been demanded.